Interresting and not too far stretch of the imagination….
On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 ET, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh. "The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued by the FBI," said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. "The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication."
“But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
The national security state is not a recent innovation, and its history in America is not one to be proud of, ranging from the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities against figures as varied as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ernest Hemmingway to the CIA’s long history of attacks on countries from Guatemala to Iran. The NSA – an organization once so secret that its existence was not disclosed for years after its founding – has received relatively little press compared to its older siblings, but it has a long history of its own.
During the Bush administration, the NSA came under fire for the practice of warrantless wiretapping, eavesdropping on phone conversations without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The practice was ruled unconstitutional and illegal by a district court judge, but this ruling was later overturned by the U.S Court of Appeals.
The agency maintained a large database of American phone calls, working with companies like AT&T and Verizon to produce “the largest database ever assembled in the world.” This information was cross-referenced with other databases, including Americans’ credit histories. In addition to telephone companies, corporations like Google also maintained cozy relationships with the NSA.
As in other matters, the Obama administration has largely maintained the policy of its predecessor when it comes to the surveillance activities of the NSA. Whether he is re-elected this November or replaced by one of the current Republican candidates, major change seems doubtful.
